Assembly
We are coming up on three months since the failure of the General Assembly and Spokes Council models in their current forms to fairly represent the needs and interests of the community. As part of this crisis of pushing onward with unfair systems that did not leave enough room for the human elements, or start with basic social conduct agreements that protected those in attendance and ensured for a safe space as a prerequisite to holding an assembly, these models lost the faith of the community and were left untouched until the community felt ready to address these issues and begin to repair these structures.

For some time now, interest in figuring out what went wrong so that we can recapture the magic of the General Assembly (without all the problems it allowed for) has led to a lot of questions and community meetings. The recent Summer Reboot discussions, however, are not focused specifically on the General Assembly, wanting to look at all of our social interactions and structural models… not just the assembly bodies we used for making decisions. There has been considerable interest in having just such a discussion, focusing on what worked about the General Assembly and what didn’t work, enough that it seems appropriate now to have a community discussion about exactly that topic.

We have tried some new tools to have meaningful discussions that can be tried in the context of our General Assemblies, such as the Open Spaces model or community meetings, while other Occupies have tried other variations in order to fix or adjust the consensus process to fit their needs. Some things that needed addressing were never meaningfully addressed, such as the encroaching lack of civility and how to deal with violence at meetings. Occupy has ‘grown up’ by three months since the last time we had a regular assembly cycle – surely we have learned something new from three more months’ experience we could discuss?

While the GA’s didn’t stop happening based on a formal consensus process, hopefully their return (or, if they aren’t wanted to continue, not) can be based on the will of the group as a whole as a meaningful group decision. The subject of this discussion will be intended to analyze the strengths and failings of the current assembly models, how to alter them to fit Occupy Wall Street, its needs and its intentions more fully, and whether the community wishes to restore group assemblies and if so, how often.

There is also a Facebook event page for this community meeting; please feel free to join it or invite others to join it.

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I don't know. I saw this post and got curious so i visited the NYGA site and then brought that here. I always believed that there are leaders, even if they don't know they are leaders. And a good thing too. At least Occupy has continued to function to protest, to be known. That's thanks to the leaders whoever they are. Bless them.

Ya, that's what I'm wondering. OWS doesn't have a GA anymore, so I imagine there are leaders now making decisions for all of us. Like what types of protest to do (Queer stuff seems prominent this summer), etc...